Control and protection are crucial to entertainment - without feeling safe and in control, people can't have fun.
I'm not denying that. What I'm arguing against is your
emphasis. You place disproportionate importance on control and protection. It's just as correct to say that without creativity, language and love, people can't have fun either.
An awareness of risk, danger and helplessness diminishes fun, and if a person still pursues the activity, then their attitude toward it changes (such as from fun to gambling).
There are many things that diminish fun. Having a loved one in the hospital dying of old age makes it difficult to have fun. There is no amount of control or protection that can prevent that situation, so I guess in your model you'd say that freeing ourselves from our loving and caring nature would be a step toward getting more out of our entertainment.
For starters, knowing that there are terrorists out there, but that the US Army is making an effort to keep US territory safe from them gives US citizens an essential sense of feeling protected. In fact, some US citizens feel so protected by the US Army that they forget they are being protected like that!
What a fucking hoax!!! The nefarious government, in order to make us feel afraid and give up more of our civil rights, has convinced us that terrorism is a major risk that must be mitigated no matter what the cost. In reality, terrorists kill Americans at the same rate as peanut allergies. Where is the hatemongering against peanut farmers? Why aren't the Homeland Gestapo spraying our peanut crop with Agent Orange?
In reality, drunk drivers kill us at
fifty times the rate of terrorists. Where is the outrage over these assholes? Since we all know who they are and where they live (we've even ridden in their cars), why aren't the Homeland Gestapo breaking down their doors and hauling them off to Guantanamo? Less polemically, why isn't there a law requiring a breathalyzer ignition interlock in every new car? The fleet turns over every ten years and the total cost would be a paltry few billion dollars, during which time we'd save more than a million lives.
Instead, we've spent trillions of dollars that we borrowed from China, and forced Al Qaeda to move their headquarters into a country that has nuclear weapons, a dysfunctional government, and no love for America, in a quixotic attempt to prevent attacks which, if left unchecked, would take another three thousand lives.
This has nothing to do with
protection or
security. But it is indeed all about
control. Frightened people are easier to fool and abuse: to
control.
This control does in fact
not increase our enjoyment of entertainment or anything else. It gives us nightmares, makes us edgy, causes family disharmony, and the anxiety and preoccupation lower productivity at work. This form of control is
detrimental to society.
I think your understanding of protection and control are very superficial.
I spent most of my 44-year career in government service so I know much more about control than you do. Several of those years were in a security specialty so I also have expertise in that discipline.
You are completely out of your league here. There are many things in life that are just as important as control and security, and (to get back on topic before I have to slap my own hand for trolling) they play just as important a role in our languages.
